A choir director must select a group of singers from among his tenors and basses. The only requirements are that the difference between the number of tenors and basses must be a multiple of , and the group must have at least one singer. Let be the number of different groups that could be selected. What is the remainder when is divided by ?
Problem 190
Pick one
Official solution
Suppose that tenors and basses are selected. The requirements are and
It follows that basses are not selected. Since the ordered pairs and the ordered pairs have one-to-one correspondence, we consider the ordered pairs instead. The requirements become and which simplify to and respectively.
As the total number of such groups is
\begin{align*} N&=\binom{14}{0}+\binom{14}{4}+\left[\binom{14}{8}-1\right]+\binom{14}{12} \\ &=\binom{14}{0}+\binom{14}{4}+\left[\binom{14}{6}-1\right]+\binom{14}{2} \\ &=1+1001+[3003-1]+91 \\ &=4095, \end{align*}
from which
~MRENTHUSIASM